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I've been writing fiction now for more than 25 years. It started out as something just for fun, and didn't amount to much more than what would today be termed fan fiction. After a little while, though, I started to create my own characters, worlds, and stories, and the dream of being a full-time writer has weaved itself in and out of my consciousness for the last couple of decades.

I currently write for both Examiner.com and MMOSite.com and, while I do receive payment for my services there, it's not exactly enough to live on. And even though getting paid to write is pretty cool no matter how you go about it, it's still not fiction, which is where my heart is. I have been paid for my fiction before (see "One More Time," available both on my website and also as a 99-cent Kindle story), but again, I'm a long way away from giving up the ol' day job.

Even though I would love to give up that day job and rake in tons of dough from publishing contracts, I&…

“Write what you know.” It’s a familiar phrase to anyone who has ever had an interest in writing, and to most who’ve ever had an English class. Followed to the extreme, it doesn’t always make sense, especially for fiction writers. I’m not sure how much Orson Scott Card really knows about sentient pig-like and bug-like aliens (Speaker For the Dead) or how much experience Stephen King has had with supernatural beings who take on the form of dancing clowns (It), but I’m guessing neither of them have witnessed such things first-hand. Of course, the point of most fiction is to show how people like us would respond to extraordinary circumstances, so the “write what you know” part of those stories is in creating characters who think and feel like real people encountering the fantastic. Much of my writing has focused on themes and situations similar to those of Card and King, but lately I’ve been playing around with more mundane matters. This has been happening slowly over time, as even st…